The company I used to work for in the past, Login Consultants, has always been famous for the many brilliant tools that they have offered over the past 5 years or so. These tools were free and (as a result?) unsupported. Today, Login Consultants has taken their software one step further and has spun off a separate software development company called: Immidio.

In Server Based Computing environment printers, or more accurately printer drivers are a constant pain. Having a universal printing product can take away that pain but sometimes you still need to get down and dirty with printers drivers anyway.

One of the things I was always very fond of in my copy of VMware Workstation was the fact that virtual disks "auto-grow" or, the more popular term, are thin provisioned. Sometimes I wish I could so the same in an ESX environment but unfortunately that is not possible, or is it?

Windows Server 2008 R2 could be considered "Windows Server 7". A lot is happening to Terminal Services. One big change is cosmetic: Terminal Server will be renamed to Remote Desktop Services. Several other changes are most definitely technical ones. Let's take a look at the biggest changes.

I have seen the importance of proper loadtesting been underestimated in SBC as well as VDI environments for more times than I care for This is why I was so happy to see this whitepaper by Microsoft titled "RDP 6.1 Performance White Paper". However I think there are more than one "but" and "maybe".

One of the biggest advantages of the concept of VDI is the extreme ease and speed with which you can provision new desktops. This "feature" in all products depends on some kind of template. I guess it goes without saying that extreme care should go into the creation of this template. This is a detailed document that lists best practices for creating such a template.

In my day (and night?) job working for Quest I get to demonstrate the Virtual Access Suite (VAS) a lot. In short this means that I have to demo a VAS infrastructure at the very least consisting of a VAS Connection Broker, a VAS Terminal Server, a VAS Virtual Desktop, a Domain Controller, a VirtualCenter server and a ESX host. With a lot of time and patience one would be able to get pretty far with this with a decent laptop up until ESX. ESX will not run on "normal laptop hardware". Period. So let me share how I found my ultimate ESX Whitebox.

The subject of running ESX in VMware Workstation has been a lively one to say the least. Some versions of Vmware Workstation did allow you to run ESX in Vmware Workstation while succesors to that version might not allow it (anymore). And if it did allow it, performance often was so horrible it would make you want to stop trying all together. But rejoice, it is possible (again) to run ESX in Vmware Workstation.

I can't count the times that Sysinternals tools have provided me with the much needed insight into Windows and why it insisted on making me pull my hair out. Process Monitor has been the most helpful tool in that respect (probably the sole reason I have any hair left today).Recently it was updated to version 2.0.

The Remote Desktop connection Web Connection used to be a (popular) option to provide access to Terminal Servers in Windows 2003.With Windows Server 2008 and it’s new TS features this can be utilized in more professional fashion by making TS Web Access Remote Desktop Web Connection work over TS Gateway.

A couple of weeks ago Microsoft (dare I say finally) released Softgrid 4.5, which is officially called App-V. This feature has a number of new features but one of the most important features is the support of streaming of applications over HTTP.

Some time ago I mentioned (blog/coreconfigurator-no-longer-avaialble.html) that are particularly popular tool for Windows Server Core, CoreConfigurator, had been discontinued. In that same article I suggested that someone else would continue the development of this tool, because it seems to be so popular. Well, as it turns out, someone has!

Recently Microsoft spiced up the Microsoft-Vmware hypervisor show with the announcement that they will be offering a “bare-metal” version of Hyper-V for free called: Hyper-V Server 2008. Coincidentally this was announced just before VMworld 2008. The download was going to be available later. Later is now.

VMware Workstation 6.5 for Windows has been released. Historically very popular amongst engineers (hopefully some of the readers) will probably now start to appeal to less technical users as well because of some of the cool new features.

Login Consultants has just released an updated version of their freebenchmarking tool, Login Virtual Session Indexer or more affectionally called Login VSI. It has some interesting new features.

With BriForum not being held in Europe anymore, PubForum is (once again?) the main SBC and VDI event in Europe. The next edition is coming up next November and the agenda is looking cool!

In my work for Quest I have to demonstrate the Virtual Access Suite and the integration with the different Hypervisors a lot. One of those supported Hypervisors is ESX. Now I know that many of us have struggled to set up a test ESX / VC enviroment. Recenly I ran into an article explaining how you can set up an ESX environments with storage for free (well with free software).

The TS Gateway is one of the most popular and implemented of the new features of Terminal Services in Windows Server 2008. One way to implement TS Gateway is to "publish" it with an Microsoft ISA Server. Not sure how to do that? Don't worry!

Yesterday I mentioned that one of my favortie RDP managers had been updated to version 1.5. Today I discovered that one of the most popular addons for RoyalTS also has been updated: the Royal Phonebook.

My favorite free RDP connection manager RoyalTS has been updated to version 1.5.There's some real work being done on this *free* product!